Fox Develops AI That Predicts A Movie’s Audience Based On Its Trailer

When it comes to predicting what people will or will not like, a lot of that is still being figured out through surveys, focus groups, and market research. However in the future it could be done a lot faster thanks to the use of AI, and one of the companies leading those efforts is Fox who has developed an AI that can predict movie audiences based on its trailer.

Whenever you visit a cinema to watch a movie, trailers are a feature that can be expected, and usually trailers are chosen based on the movie that is being shown. For example an animated movie designed for young children probably won’t get trailers for horror movies. However with this AI that Fox is developing, it will make it easier to pick trailers that could cater to the movie audience.

This AI will be able to determine what kind of audience would watch it based on several factors in the trailer, such as the colors used in the film, illumination, faces, objects, landscapes, and more. According to the researchers, “By finding a suitable representation of these features, and by feeding them to a model that has access to historical movie attendance records, it is possible to find non-trivial associations between the video trailer features, and future audiences choices after the movie releases in theaters or on streaming services.”

Granted trailers don’t always tell the whole story and in some cases can also be a tad misleading to make a movie seem more exciting than it really is, but at least in terms of marketing, this AI could make trailers even more effective at getting moviegoers to buy tickets.